'Hawthorn's approach has the merit of transcending a number of familiar and overworked polarities often used to give shape to the apparent heterogeneity of sociological thought … [His] accounts of France, Germany and Britain are terse, but rich, blending intellectual history with the sociology of knowledge in a way that avoids the reductionism to which the latter is so notoriously prone. [He] has summarized with extraordinary economy and lucidity the major developments in the rise of European Sociology.' The Times Literary Supplement